Expansys UK removes HTC Butterfly from listings, won't be flying into Europe after all

Following the announcement of the 5-inch, 1080p HTC Butterfly for China, a lot of people -- including us -- started getting a little excited when some signs of the device appeared on European retailers websites. HTC confirmed to us at the time that the device was officially only launching in China, leading us to believe that any purchases made in Europe would be of grey imports.

Seems that even this many not be the case anymore. The chaps over at the UK based site Coolsmartphone, actually went and pre-ordered a Butterfly from UK based Expansys. Granted, there was no price, no mention of when they would become available, but a definite intent it seemed that they would be offering the device for sale. Over the weekend they received this email from Expansys, detailing that in fact the device would not be coming to the UK at this time:

Thank you for your recent interest and preorder of the HTC Butterfly. Unfortunately, we have now been informed by HTC that this device will not be available in European markets, and as such we have had to remove it from our website and cancel your preorder.

We're not all that sure where the Expansys stock may have been sourced from in the first place, but it's pretty clear cut that we won't be getting any. But, then again, Mobile World Congress takes place in just a couple of months, so who knows what the future may hold.

I would go back to HTC in a heartbeat if they did like they did with the Sprint Evo4GLTE with sd support. But it needs to be a pentaband DC42 device along with LTE. If it isn't then that just puts it back on ATT and still drops all the other carries (Tmo) that would sell the begessus out of it.

Is it me or does anyone else just feel like when ever HTC get the opportunity to really challenge Samsung and keep up the competition, they just do the complete opposite for no apparent or logical reason which ALWAYS results in them doing themselves no favours? The One X is one of the best phones around, yet its taken a life time to get Jellybean up and running on it without rooting. They have the whole unlocking bootloader voids warranty policy that again, for no reason, just puts them in a position where the consumer is unwilling to do what they would want with their phone that they can with Samsung. And then this.. a phone which has a screen that's lightyears better than the Note 2. Better hardware and every feature you could possibly want, a great contender for the Note.. and they don't release it here. HTC baffle me sometimes, I want them to do well but every time they make these stupid decisions I kind of feel like they deserve to keep losing out. Whoever is making these decisions needs to go, before its too late. I love my One X, I think its a fantastic phone and I would love my next phone to be theirs as well as I know in a lot of respects, it'll be great. But at the same time, I don't want to have to deal with these barriers that HTC pointlessly put up to make my life difficult when I want to do things with my phone that every other phone company lets you do.